e said they never heerd language like
Katie used yon time."

"She didn't swear, did she, John?' Mrs. Watson asked, in a shocked
tone, giving him a significant look which, interpreted, meant that
was not the time to tell the truth if the truth were incriminating.

"No," John said slowly, "Katie would not waste her breath swearin'.
She told the man mostly what she thought of him, and how his looks
struck her, and what he reminded her of. I mind she said a rang o'
tang would lose friends if he changed faces with him, and a few
things like that, but nobody could say that Katie used language
unbecomin' a lady. She was always partick'ler that way."

"Would you like to write to her and see how she is, Pa?" Pearl asked.

"Well, now I don't care if I do," her father answered.

The letter was written with infinite pains. The composition was
Pearlie's, and Pearlie was in her happiest mood, and so it really was
a very pleasant and alluring picture she drew of how John Watson had
prospered since coming west, and then, to give weight to it, she sent
a snapshot that Camilla had taken of the whole family in their good
clothes.

"It seems to me," Mrs. Watson said one night, "like as if we are
gettin' on too prosperous. The childer have been gettin' on so well,
and we're all so happy like, I'm feart somethin' will happen. This is
too good to last."

Mrs. Watson had a strain of Highland blood in her, and there was a
Banshee in the family two generations back, so it was not to be
wondered at that she sometimes indulged in gloomy forebodings.

Every day she looked for something to happen. One day it did. It was
Aunt Katie from "down the Ottaway!"

Aunt Kate Shenstone came unannounced, unheralded by letter, card, or
telegram. Aunt Kate said you never could depend on the mails--they
were like as not to open your letter and keep your stamp! So she
came, carrying her two telescope valises and her handbag. She did not
believe in having anything checked--that was inviting disaster!

Aunt Kate found her way to the Watson home under the direction of
Wilford Ducker, who had all his previous training on the subject of
courtesy to strangers seriously upset by the way Jimmy Watson talked
to him when they met a few days afterward.

"You see, John," Mrs. Shenstone said to her brother, when he came
home, "it seemed so lucky when I got your letter. I always did want
to come to Manitoba, but Bill, that's my man, John, he was a sort of
a tie,